Artist Quotes

Never trust the artist, trust the tale.

All worthy work is open to interpretations the author did not intend. Art isn't your pet -- it's your kid. It grows up and talks back to you.

Good artists copy, great artists steal

It starts out and he says 'I'm an artist.' At the end it says 'I'm a good artist.' We were just adding one more word, but it's a very powerful word. The artist has accomplished something. You may struggle through it. There might be the unhappy moments which are 'I'm not good enough. I can't do it.' Stick with it. But at the same time don't force yourself too much.

I'm freak, so what :P

It is good to love many things, for therein lies strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done with love is well done.

The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.

An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Art is the signature of man.

Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence.

When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk you’ll end up as the pope.’ Instead I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.

It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.


Not anyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

Every artist was first an amateur.

At each stage I reach a balance, a conclusion. At the next sitting, if I find that there is a weakness in the whole, I make my way back into the picture by means of the weakness — I re-enter through the breach — and I reconceive the whole. Thus everything becomes fluid again.

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail.

L'homme c'est rien - l'oeuvre c'est tout.

In my opinion, if I could write all my work again, I am convinced that I would do it better, which is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps on working, trying again; he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't, which is why this condition is healthy.

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us. Proof of that is that there are about three candidates for the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. But what is important is Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream, not who wrote them, but that somebody did. The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said.